﻿Gratitude Gourmet(tm)﻿

In addition to being a Vancouver Olympics Gold and Silver Medalist, Hannah Teter is also a vegetarian and is working on living a 'greener' life.I have a Snowboard Today Twitter Account as well where I featured this article. Per the recent People magazine article she started being Vegetarian last year and says she feels "stronger mentally and physically..and springier". She also says, "more people would become vegetarians if they knew how animals were slaughtered." She starts each day with a power smoothie, and for dinner loves cooking stir-fry vegetarian dishes with a side of Quinoa, a high-protein grain.In addition to eating healthy, she wants to live greener. She says, "I'm moving into a yurt in the woods near my parents' home in Vermont." Her father produces maple syrup on the property that Hannah sells for her charity Hannah's Gold. The money goes to the needy in Kenya and Haiti, and her sponsor Samsung granted $30,000 to the charity on Saturday in recognition of Hannah's silver medal. You can read the full People article here.

A new National Cancer Institute of Health study states people who eat the most red meat and the most processed meat have the highest overall risk of death from all causes, including heart disease and cancer. The details are here.

The USDA sponsored an Agricultural Outlook Forum on 'Sustainable Agriculture: The Key to Health and Prosperity' February 18-19, 2010 in Arlington, Virginia. The speakers included Tom Vilsack, Secretary of Agriculture, USDA, Fedele Bauccio, CEO Bon Appétit Management Company, Walter Robb, Co-President & COO Whole Foods Market, and Nina Fedoroff, Science and Technology Advisor to the U.S. Secretary of State.I recently met with Fedele Bauccio, and he provided me the details of his speech on 'Sustainability: A Transparent Dialogue With Customers' which I thought you would find enlightening.For background, you may remember my previous interview with Fedele Bauccio from last year's Fortune Brainstorm Green Conference. Bon Appétit Management Company has onsite restaurants for corporations, colleges, and universities and specialty venues with 400 locations in 30 states, $550+ million in revenues, 10,000 employees, and over 120 million meals annually served. It has recently won awards from NRDC and EDF and introduced the Low Carbon Diet Online Calculator.

In Fedele's Agricultural Outlook presentation, he detailed his customers' interest in knowing where the food originated. As a result:

At least 20% of their ingredients are purchased from a small local farm or artisan within 150 miles of each kitchen and are seasonally and minimally processed.

A code of conduct for farmworker treatment was created and a ground-breaking agreement with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers was signed.

Fedele says there are remaining challenges:

Lack of transparency in supply chain for commodity products

Veil of silence hiding unfair farm labor practices

Bon Appétit Management Company also found that customers want to know if the company is environmentally responsible. The company knows that:

The Food system contributes as much as 1/3 of total greenhouse gas emissions on a global basis

Livestock operations contribute 18% of all greenhouse gas emissions worldwide, more than the transportation sector

As a result, they have:

Implemented the Low Carbon Diet Program

Reduced beef purchases by 33% and cheese by 10%

Purchase vegetables and non-tropical fruit from North America

Reduced food waste by 20%

Conducted energy and water audits

Fedele says the remaining challenges and concerns include:

Water issues: nearly half of the water consumed in the United States is used to grow feed for cattle and other livestock, while fresh water in the United States is decreasing at an alarming rate

70% of antibiotics are used for Animals and not humans

Lack of Country of Origin requirements for all sectors

Lack of information about transportation method information, and

Inadequate data collection infrastructure

You can see the full Transcript, Presentation, and Webcast of Fedele's Presentation here.

Fedele has also recently testified for a Pew Commission Hearing on the House side regarding Antibiotics.

Fedele is a perfect example of a CEO running a large, successful, and growing company while doing great things for the World. We need more CEOs and Business Owners like him.

Hanna Teeter, US Olympic Snowboarder, says Organic Food is the Secret to Going Big in the Halfpipe. Check out the video below and set it at 2:21 minutes. A bonus: US Gold Olympian Snowboarder Shaun White is next on the video with his Secret.

Obesity rates in the US have skyrocketed over the last twenty years, with no end in sight provoking former surgeon General, Richard Carmona to state: “obesity is a terror within. It is destroying our society from within and unless we do something about it, the magnitude of the dilemma will dwarf 9/11 or any other terrorist event that you can point out…” Beyond the shocking medical statistics and newspaper headlines, Killer at Large also examines the ethical and moral implications of the obesity epidemic with leaders of several world religions and exposes public policies that have contributed to the problem. Clearly, America is on the wrong path and as Dr. Lionel Tiger says in the film, “It’s a battle we fight three times a day and we’ve all been drafted. It’s truly the most democratic of wars.”

Zhena's Gypsy Tea has released Superberry Tea, Teas for Women's Health. There are five, USDA Certified Organic and Fair Trade Certified teas including Acaiberry, Cacaoberry, Cherryberry, Pomberry, and Wholeberry. If you like chocolate, you must try Cacaoberry (ingredients include Sencha green tea with rooibos, cacao, raspberries, and dark chocolate).Zhena, who has a degree in aromatherapy, love of tea, and Ukranian Gypsy ancestry, started selling her teas out of a cart on California street corners. Now she has an Award Winning Brand!

Have you been watching the Vancouver Winter Olympics? What are your favorite sports? I recently saw this Olympic Ring Cookie Cutter sold by Ann Clark. Do you know the history of the Olympic Rings? The rings were adopted by Baron Pierre de Coubertin (founder of the modern Olympic movement) in 1913 after he saw a similar design on an artifact from ancient Greece. The five rings represent the five major regions of the world: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania.

Did you know Chateau Picard is the estate red wine produced at Jean-Luc Picard's family vineyards in La Barre, France? Picard kept a few bottles of the wine on the Enterprise-D for special occasions (StarTrek Nemesis). You can see this wine and the ship's scene at the Star Trek Exhibit happening at the San Jose Tech Museum. Unfortunately, they are not doing tastings. :-)

Along with more than 350 creative and wholesome breakfast, salad, soup, snack and side, main dish and sweet recipes, based on the company’s commitment to good health and deliciously better living, the book includes helpful information about how to cook with unusual grains such as teff, amaranth and Kamut®. Gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan recipes are featured throughout the book in addition to recipes that incorporate familiar ingredients such as brown rice. "We sifted through many hundreds of recipes, testing and fine-tuning each dish to ensure great results and developing a number of new creations to round out the mix. Not all home cooks are well acquainted with quinoa, much less blue cornmeal, millet, and triticale, so it was important for this cookbook to make the full range of whole grains accessible, appealing, and easy to use,” said Miriam Backes. “And everything had to be tasty. When you're cooking with whole grains there is no reason ever to sit down to a meal that's anything short of delicious."

My favorite Marshmallows are made by Sweet and Sara, and you must try their Smores! Check out the Food Network video below on how they're made, and use the special Food Network 20% discount code (FN20) on the Sweet and Sara site.

I saw the Circle of Life Movie in Budapest when I was a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Hungary. I've always had a respect for animals at a very early age and appreciated the movie's message. During my US Peace Corps Service, I decided to become a vegetarian. Here's the Circle of Life Song which always inspires me when I listen to its wonderful lyrics and music. Life is Precious.

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